Digital amnesia or a startling wake-up call?

MUMBAI, INDIA: While there are numerous surveys propagating the whopping rise in smart phones, a new survey says that extensive use of smart phones and Internet can cause digital amnesia.

A survey by Kaspersky Lab has found that over use of smart phones and Internet can weaken our memory power, and lead to digital amnesia.

The security company which surveyed 6,000 people of 16 years and older in six European countries, found that the teenagers extensively spent their time on smart phones and more than 50 percent of it was spent in surfing the Internet.

The respondents were unable to answer basic questions regarding important information about their loved ones. The researchers concluded that they were forgetting information because it was stored on their smart phones and could be easily fetched, when needed.

According to Kaspersky, seven out of ten respondents were unable to recall their children’s phone numbers, and nine out of ten weren’t able to remember the numbers for their children’s schools.

The report also revealed that only 50 percent adults could instantly recall their home phone numbers. In addition, more than 50 percent of the participants aged up to 25 excused that almost everything needed are stored on their smart phones.

“So instead, people are replacing the ability to remember specifics with the certainty as they are now able to store the information online and retrieve it later — a sort of digital amnesia. In fact, more than 90 percent of those surveyed for the survey agreed that they use the Internet as an online extension of their brain,” Kaspersky remarked.

“One of the reasons consumers might be less worried about remembering information is because they have connected devices they trust,” said Kathryn Mills, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.

David Emm, Principal Security Researcher, Kaspersky Lab, added, “Connected devices enrich our lives but they have also given rise to digital amnesia. We need to understand the long-term implications of this for how we remember and how we protect [our] memories.”